Hot water 6L(roughly 60-70 degree celsius)
Salt 90g
Fresh sujiko (ideally harvest from chum salmon)roughly 6-7 roe sacks
Mix salt and hot water. Immediately drop the sujiko into the hot water brine and start shaking the roe sacks in the hot water brine, do not worry about the eggs popping, it is a lot tougher than you would expect. Membranes of the sujiko will start shrinking and the roe sack will start to fall apart, hold on to the large membrane and slowly you will be holding nothing but membrane as the roe sinks to the bottom of the brine. Repeat it until all the eggs were separate from the sujiko. Collect the eggs and drain them in a colander and bowl. Cover with saran wrap and refrigerate over night. The salmon eggs are now ready for marinading.
I usually do a 100 dashi : 20 shouyu : 10 sake : 5 yuzu zest : 600 salmon eggs (by weight). Occasionally i sub sake with peated scotch and leave the yuzu alone.
If you wanna try something more advanced, Saikyo Miso Mirin mix (10:1) is a good one too just a lil more finicky, you need will need cheese cloth, sheet tray with this one. Spread the miso mirin mix onto the sheet tray evenly, lay cheesecloth on top of the miso mix and spread the ikura. Lay cheesecloth on top of the ikura and spread miso mix again evenly. Check it every day to see how the ikura is marinading so far. Make sure the cheese cloth was well covered for the ikura.
Usually using this hot water brine method, anisakis aka. the parasite will be dead due to the hot water. However I’d still suggest you freeze the marinaded roe for safety precautions.
4 comments
Also further the ikura season, the harder or poppier and bigger the ikura gets. As the membranes of the fish hardens when they swim further into freshwater, the earlier the salmon eggs season the softer, tender and smaller its gonna be.
Looks great
I recently did some research about this because of a similar post.
https://old.reddit.com/r/JapaneseFood/comments/16f20zr/i_made_ikura_at_home/k0n20db/
The Japanese Ministry of Health states that anisakis parasites will die in 60c water x 1 min or instantly at 70c.
Some guy did an experiment making ikura from sujiko using different water temperatures and it turns out that even at 100c, the ikura will still end up “normal” if submerged for 1min or less. So a quick 70c+ hot water bath as a finisher might be a good way to ensure food safety, esp if using some alternate method to separate the ikura from the sujiko.
Ikura eggs will start to cook/harden at 80c at 1min+.
You can make hanjuku/half-cooked ikura at 85c x 10 min (you can use a sous vide device to maintain temperature).
Okay but the real question has yet to be answered…
これは…イクラですか?